Indictment states Bin Laden is recruiting Americans
Special to World Tribune.com
Friday, May 21, 1999
A former U.S. Army sergeant has been indicted on
charges that he participated in a plan by Saudi millionaire exile Osama
bin Laden to kill Americans abroad.
An indictment filed in U.S. district court in Manhattan states that Bin Laden
and his colleagues have been trying since at least 1989 to recruit American citizens
to launch terrorist operations.
Ali Mohamed, 46 who emigrated from Egypt, was accused of being part of
Bin Laden's campaign to kill U.S. military personnel stationed in Saudi
Arabia and Somalia as well as helping in last August's bombings of the
U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Mohamed, a former major in the Egyptian military, was in the U.S. Army
reserves during Bin Laden's conspiracy. He entered the United States in
1985 and became a citizen. A year later he enlisted in the U.S. Army and
remained until 1994.
The indictment said Mohamed was working for Bin Laden's Al Qaeda
organization since 1990. He helped Bin Laden in Afghanistan, Pakistan
and Sudan. The United States allowed the entry of thousands of Muslim
fighters after they fought Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the early
1980s.
Al Qaeda, the indictment said, also operated through such organizations
as the Egyptian-based Jihad and the organization led by Sheik Omar Abdel
Rahman, convicted in 1996 for a plot to bomb New York City landmarks and
kill political and religious figures.
Egypt has issued a request for the extradition of Mohammed, one of 107
Jihad members sentenced two weeks ago in a military court. Most of the
defendants were sentenced in absentia. Egypt has also requested the
extradition of about two dozen other defendants from the Arab states and
Britain.
The indictment says Mohammed helped Al Qaeda review U.S., British,
French and Israeli targets. Mohammed is said to have acquired documents
about surveillance and explosives and "the planning of terrorist
operations and the structuring of a terrorist group into different
cells."
Friday, May 21, 1999
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